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"El Topo": A Synopsis Thus Far

Midnight movie at The Music Box:The movie takes place in two parts. The first half, in an unnamed desert, begins with the title character, accompanied by his naked son, hunting down and killing a band of outlaws who have butchered the inhabitants of a town. After leaving his son with monks he has rescued from the outlaws, he rides off with a woman the outlaws had kept captive to defeat the four great masters of pistol duelling. As El Topo encounters each of the first three masters, the master teaches El Topo a lesson and they then duel, in which El Topo cheats every time. The final master kills himself, in a demonstration of the unimportance of life. The first half ends with El Topo’s betrayal and near-murder by the woman and an unnamed informant.

The second half of the movie takes place years later, after El Topo is rescued by a band of deformed outcasts, saving him from death. The outcasts take El Topo to their underground community, where he, comatose, meditates on the four lessons for many years. When he awakes, he is ‘born again’ with the help of the outcasts, and goes on a quest to free them from their subterranean prison.

With the help of his dwarf girlfriend and his full-grown son, now a priest, El Topo digs an exit out of the cave, only to see the others of his community murdered by cultists from a nearby town. In a rage, El Topo kills them all, then pours oil on himself and sets himself on fire, as he has learned all he can about life.

El Topo’s son and girlfriend survive the ordeal and make a grave for his remains, which becomes a beehive full of honey.

Published by linaramona

Lina ramona Vitkauskas (Lithuanian-American-Canadian, b. 1973) is the author of White Stockings (White Hole Press, 2016); SPINY RETINAS (Mutable Sound, 2014); Professional Poetry (White Hole Press, 2013); A Neon Tryst (Shearsman Books, 2013); HONEY IS A SHE (Plastique Press, 2012); THE RANGE OF YOUR AMAZING NOTHING (Ravenna Press, 2010); Failed Star Spawns Planet/Star (dancing girl press, 2006); and Shooting Dead Films with Poets (Fractal Edge Press, 2004).
In 2013, she was selected by Eleni Sikelianos for the Henry Miller Memorial Library Ping Pong Journal Award, and in 2009, she was selected by Brenda Hillman for The Poetry Center of Chicago’s Juried Reading Award. She has also been nominated by Another Chicago Magazine for an Illinois Arts Council Award. Her publications include Rain Taxi, VIDA, Dusie (Canada), Atticus Review, POETBOOK, Spork, The Awl, Matter, Coconut, Tarpaulin Sky, Requited, DIAGRAM, TriQuarterly, The Chicago Review, The Toronto Quarterly, VLAK (Ed. Louis Armand, Edmund Berrigan), The Prague Literary Review, White Fungus (Taiwan; recently displayed at MoMA), and more.
In 2000, she earned an M.A. in Creative Writing from Wright State University, where she participated in a summer workshop with Nikky Finney, the 2012 National Book Award Winner in Poetry.
Lina is a current faculty member and the marketing director at the Chicago School of Poetics, as well as the co-editor/designer of the 14-year-running online literary magazine, milk magazine (featuring Robert Creeley, Wanda Coleman, Ron Padgett, Michael McClure, and Japanese surrealist, Yamamoto Kansuke, among others).
For 11 years, she has been a part of Chicago’s poetry community in many capacities—as a reader, collaborator, co-curator, co-founder, organizer/facilitator, instructor, literary arts nonprofit director, and contest judge. Reading series Lina has been featured in and projects she’s been involved with include: Chicago Public Radio’s “Chicago Amplified,” Myopic Books, Danny’s, Red Rover (@ OUTER SPACE), Woman Made Gallery, Series A, Quimby’s, Balzekas Lithuanian Museum, Wĭt Rabbit, Dollhouse Reading Series, 100,000 Poets for Change, HUMAN MICROPOEM at Occupy Chicago, Discrete, Around the Coyote, Future Perfect + New Media, Evanston Public Library, and many more.
Professionally, Lina holds certifications from Northwestern University (in philanthropy) and DePaul University (pedagogy), and possesses more than a decade of experience as a senior-level copywriter, editor, and marketing strategist for major clients such as Sears, McGraw Hill, and Northwestern University.
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